Author: Robert Schumann

Publisher: London : V. Gollancz

Published: 1965

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13:

"Robert Schumann was almost as important in his day for his criticism as for his compositions. His influence was great: it was thanks to him for instance that Berlioz was taken up with enthusiasm by the new romantic school in Germany when he visited the country in 1842. Schumann was one of the very first, also, to recognise the genius of Chopin, and to poke fun at German extra-musical Beethoven-worship. For ten years (1834-44) he owned, edited, and for the most part, wrote the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, but there has been no satisfactorily edited volume of these writings to date. A selection was translated by Fanny Raymond Ritter in 1876-79 and another translated by Paul Rosenfeld in 1946; in both cases, however, chronological order was disregarded and annotation was meagre. Moreover, the latter concentrated almost exclusively on what Schumann had written about the great masters. Henry Pleasants believes that chronological arrangement is essential to an understanding both of Schumann's progress as a writer and critic and of music in Germany during a decisive decade. He also believes that Schumann's status as a critic cannot be assessed and enjoyed simply from his glowing accounts of the greatest works, but that his views on composers such as Spohr, Hiller, Thalberg, Cramer and Sir William Sterndale Bennett (to name only a few of his contemporaries, famous then but little remembered today) are also important. Many of these composers were Schumann's friends, and his criticisms of their work tell us not only about them but also about Schumann himself. Mr. Pleasants has chosen a cross-section that reveals Schumann's critical powers as fully as possible, places him in perspective among his fellow musicians, and demonstrates his knowledge and appreciation of the composer's craft. The Neue Zeitschrift itself had a romantic beginning, late in 1833. Beethoven, Schubert and Weber were dead, and there seemed little ground for optimism about the future of music in Germany. A group of young men, eager for an advance, launched the magazine: but like many enterprises of its kind it was on the point of early dissolution when Schumann took it over. Wishing to express widely divergent views, he invented for the purpose the Davidsbundler, with Florestan and Eusebius as the principal members and master Raro as an intermediary. These names--so familiar to lovers of music and ballet, for he used two of them in his Carnaval variations--appear throughout the selection, humorously combining truth and poetry. Schumann was a sophisticated critic whose knowledge of, and sympathy with, his art and its exponents make him a model for generations to come. His selected writings, now for the first time fully annotated, are an outstanding and distinguished addition to our growing list of classics about music." --Dust jacket.